Many communication channels are subject to channel noise, and thus errors may be introduced during transmission from the source to a receiver. Error detection techniques enable detecting such errors, while error correction enables reconstruction of the original data after transmission. A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is an example of error-detecting processes utilized in digital networks, sensor networks, detecting accidental changes in raw data, and various communication systems. Blocks of data entering these systems can get a short check value attached thereto based on the remainder of a polynomial division of the contents. Upon retrieval, the calculation is repeated, and corrective action can be taken against presumed data corruption when the check values do not match. CRC codes or CRCs can be simple to implement in binary hardware, easy to analyze mathematically, and are particularly good at detecting common errors caused by noise in transmission channels. However, software based CRC calculations can potentially consume significant amounts of processing time, or large amounts of memory, and may exceed the limited resources available in most embedded microcontroller systems.